Short Story: Sometimes life is tenacious, whether holding on or letting go.
Someone to Love Her
The look of death was already there in her ashen cheek and blank stare. In her heart she was committed to the jump. Yet her feet clung tenaciously to the narrow ledge.
I opened my tenth story office window just inches from where she stood. She seemed not to be aware of me as I leaned cautiously out as far as I dared in an effort to look into her face and lock into her consciousness. My mind raced. What to say to a young girl bent on self-destruction? Then as I gazed at her striking profile, my gaze became riveted to her nose. Her nose, of all things! What can be said about a nose in a life and death moment? But, fearing time was short, I blurted the only thing I could think of.
"Have you ever done any modeling?" (Inane!, I thought.) But she quickly glanced in my direction, then turned away again. I knew she had heard me but she did not reply. However, in that brief glance I had recognized something being born. Curiosity. She was at least curious about what I had said. And if curiosity can kill a cat, just maybe it can bring a desperate young woman back from the brink. I tried again, praying that my voice would hold steady;
"You have a lovely profile. I just thought that perhaps you had worked for the modeling agency in this building." She turned slowly toward me then, pure hate in her eyes.
"What do you care?" She fairly spat the words. I knew that only complete honesty would do now. I spoke as matter-of-factly as I could. "I care a great deal about what happens to you in the next five minutes. If you jump from this ledge you will take a part of me with you." It was obvious by the sneer on her lips that she wasn't buying that, but I hurried on. "Every day of my life I will think of you the way you look now. I will remember that lovely profile and the way the wind draws your hair across your eyes. I will wonder what your name was and whether anyone except me had ever loved you. And I will always, always wish that I had known you before today. Maybe you would have come here anyway, but at least you would have come knowing that someone cared that you were here. And if you did jump, you wouldn't have been alone; no one is ever alone once they have been loved."
She offered me a puzzled stare, but the pain in her eyes was beginning to be diluted by tears. Suddenly they were coursing down cheeks now flushed with emotion. She fought the feeling; she had not meant to care about anything again ~ ever.
I held out my hand to her. She stood frozen for an eternity, then slowly reached for me. Our fingers touched and then locked. I held my breath as she so very cautiously began to slide toward me and the open window. Then she was in my arms; we were inside and I held her close for another long, breathless moment. But then she pushed me away and turned to the open window again. I gasped and grabbed for her!
She closed the window and locked it.
Short story by Barbara Carleton
Read 558 times
Written on 2010-09-15 at 17:13
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